WIP - Guam Theatre
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TwoJay,
The final elevations were not set at the time of these screens. Demer is in the process of finishing them up. If you will notice in one of the screens the caution light is on, that is because I had to fly in instant action and got hit by an SA 13, I guess he was camera shy.
Vags
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Also nice job on the night tiles (tool).
Is it posible to give the lighted parts an slightly orange color instead of pure white?
… would look more realistic IMHO.Yeah know what you mean…
Used 4 shades of pure greys, 50/50/50 - 100/100/100 - 150/150/150 - 210/210/210 for the example.
Up to 256 night colors can be defined, each using a user defined RGB value.
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Nice job, Demer and crew.
I like the tiles flying @ 5000ft and above , although I’m curious how they would look in higher resolution.
(low res is especially noticeable on the pixelated roads ;))Yeah,I think Ted is going to look into that,at least he has permission to play with them if he want’s.I’m a bit tired of playing with tile’s ATM.Have a bunch of objective work to do yet.
@Khronik
Also nice job on the night tiles (tool).
Is it posible to give the lighted parts an slightly orange color instead of pure white?
… would look more realistic IMHO.Amazing work anyway Carlo,seeing as I didn’t give you any N Tile’s to start with……
Cheers,
LSdemer
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With Demer’s kind permission I have taken his Guam textures for the spin and some little experiment to see if higher resolution textures makes such a big difference and ultimately if they are worth the size of the download and perhaps inevitable performance impact. I have quickly substituted some original 256 textures with 1024 without editing water and making any extra adjustments for tile scale (clearly visible on the shots). Here is the series of them to give you some comparison and better idea:
AAA
High altitude (this is BTW how most of Falcon4 terrains and words are being viewed) NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE
BBB
Lower altitude SOME DIFFERENCE become visible
CCC
High res next to low res side by side
DDD
Outsde view from some distance Low Res
EEE
Outsde view from some distance High Res (high res helps illusion of cliff hight)
FFF
Very low altitude , Low Res - not too good.
GGG
Very low altidute , High Res - quite a difference is visible.
So there….
Conclusion of this experiment is that probable 1024 textures are not worth the size and load on GPU/CPU. Perhaps 512 is still the best solution for Falcon4 worlds. Still I would like to stress that the look from high altitude even with low resolution textures is top notch (!) and provides quite an immersive feeling while flying over Guam theater .
Additional advantage of this very concept of island theater is that, except of course for the ocean, there is no seamless tiling and no ackward repetition patterns and problems.I have seen quite a few photoreal pieces of work, including even desert theater made be myself. Nowhere I have felt
such a surprise and new feel of flying Falcon as here. All efforts should be made to make code changes and improvement of the utilities and terrain tools to make more of photoreal material available.Thanks Dave again. :headb:
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Dave,
I made some further investigation into this project and I wonder if mentioned by you MapTiler for Google (which you have used to slice the image to tiles) is making all those rather poor 256 textures. Check the original image which was used to make the tiles (if you still have one).You know that Photoshop can also slice any image to any size tiles. It will save in png which in turn can be converted to Dxt5 dds with DDs converter. Advantage of this path is that you can easy edit transparency for water on the large image before slicing and all those above mentioned processes will keep the transparency channel. Selecting water areas on big image is much easier and faster than on thousand tiles later after slicing.
So first you convert all to DXT5 and then you can just pick land tiles and batch convert them again to DXt1.
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maybe it’s a bit OT.
but is there a better method than stamp and paste from google/bing maps to obtain large images? since is really time consuming making all the shots then import in PS and link them up propely. anyway for my machine a 4096sq image in dds with alpha is quite hard to handle…
the quality of satellite images is the key imho for the analisys of high res/low res. a good image will look better @1024 low level only if the source has that kind of resolution and is not resizing the smaller one
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is there a better method than stamp and paste from google/bing maps to obtain large images? since is really time consuming making all the shots then import in PS and link them up propely. anyway for my machine a 4096sq image in dds with alpha is quite hard to handle.
For processing large photorealistic pictures it is top important to have a lot of memory and HD space …and reasonable late Photoshop for proper DDS format manipulation.
Do not torture yourself with manual d/l and pasting. Try SBuilderX. However, problem there :waterstamp.
http://www.ptsim.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=56 -
Dave,
I made some further investigation into this project and I wonder if mentioned by you MapTiler for Google (which you have used to slice the image to tiles) is making all those rather poor 256 textures. Check the original image which was used to make the tiles (if you still have one).You know that Photoshop can also slice any image to any size tiles. It will save in png which in turn can be converted to Dxt5 dds with DDs converter. Advantage of this path is that you can easy edit transparency for water on the large image before slicing and all those above mentioned processes will keep the transparency channel. Selecting water areas on big image is much easier and faster than on thousand tiles later after slicing.
So first you convert all to DXT5 and then you can just pick land tiles and batch convert them again to DXt1.
Hi Ted,
Thank’s again for your effort’s on this little Theater.
I still have the original map mash up’s and can 7zip them to you if you’d like.
Let me know.
They contain the jpeg main and split’s as well as the original dds tile’s.
Though I think your HiRez texture’s look much better and would like to pursue that more if your up to it.As stated,I don’t care about texture Folder size anymore when it come’s to the installer.BUT I agree that 512x512 is prob’ly a good compromise for Falcon.As you can see from the texture .bin file I did not use any water SET’s. I played with it a couple month’s ago,as did Brian,and found the DX engine is basically caring about the Alpha channel to render the water shader’s.DXT3 worked fine for me.
Also, as I am starting to build the Red Flag Campain’ the GU\NU\AU are performing quite nicely without defined AREA’s on the tile’s……very interesting to me?!?!?!!?Dave
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I still have the original map mash up’s and can 7zip them to you if you’d like. Let me know.
Send me , I 'll take a look not perhaps in order to redo the textures but to find out why 256 textures appear to be so lossy (it is perhaps because the main is JPEG format).
and found the DX engine is basically caring about the Alpha channel to render the water shader’s.DXT3 worked fine for me.
DXT3 is fine as long one does not want that feathered effect on the shoreline when transparent meets solid. Only DXT5 allows to have this alpha gradient (gradual transition of transparency).
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Dave, sorry for forgetting screens as thank you, I took quite some nice shots, but accidently deleted the upload, now too tired.
Also wanted to post shots at FF -other stuff of course- but barely can type now almost 06.00 tomorrow action butt day.
Lol, Arapron tired type mode, ignore and carry on.Cheers men…
Tom
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Send me , I 'll take a look not perhaps in order to redo the textures but to find out why 256 textures appear to be so lossy (it is perhaps because the main is JPEG format).
DXT3 is fine as long one does not want that feathered effect on the shoreline when transparent meets solid. Only DXT5 allows to have this alpha gradient (gradual transition of transparency).
Sorry to pork this a bit but reading this stuff wouldn’t be a tilers heaven and hell as workload that this transparency thing could work and on ground tiles so that their transition could be better? like from mud to rocks and sand? like made up tiles to photoreal?
As I understood it this can be done only with water tiles right? Wouldn’t be nice to have the ability for custom declare the transparency of tiles? Or is it done already?
Sorry for the OT. -
Wouldn’t be nice to have the ability for custom declare the transparency of tiles? Or is it done already?
It would require that @ transition 2 textures be allowed to occupy 1 space. It is not in Falcon4, but this in fact is how most transitions are being handled in engines which allowed for that and is called texture splatting.
Other than that DXT5 is 342 KB and nontransparent DXT1 is exactly half of that. So, no saving by not having transition prerendered.
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It would require that @ transition 2 textures be allowed to occupy 1 space. It is not in Falcon4, but this in fact is how most transitions are being handled in engines which allowed for that and is called texture splatting.
Other than that DXT5 is 342 KB and nontransparent DXT1 is exactly half of that. So, no saving by not having transition prerendered.
lol Size doesn’t matter… lol Really with this new gfx and terrain engine it seems that there will be no problem as the “OLD” days.
The thing is that this transparency is set to sea tiles only?
Well to tell us the truth nope.
Cause as the guides say u put alpha not to sea tiles but coastline tiles and the same for rivers and lakes…
So let’s say if we declare all tiles as sea tiles than we will have the transparency? Right?
Does it affect anything else except the massive suicide attempts, strokes and heart attacks by tile and theater creators??? LOL -
except the massive suicide attempts, strokes and heart attacks by tile and theater creators
I hope not!
Transparency is not limited to water tiles. You can put alpha channel in any tile you want.
The question is to what purpose? ATM for water and also I have used that same trick for mountains and snow.
Anything else? Transitions? Possible. Currently, however, that would not work, unless coders introduce some new ways the textures are handled and used. -
This is incredible. Can’t wait to fly in it.
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Redflag campaign is heating up……
Heading south to take care of a few Blue guy’s:
Buzzing past NAS Guam:
Getting ready for some Cat and Mouse play:
demer
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Cheers,
LS -
Not bad my friend. Needs more resolution below 7000, but quite immersive! Now add those alphas for seatiles and up it goes.
Main base still levelling issues, took a screen, but I assume that’s not new to you, also only took a short flight last night.:lol: -
Not bad my friend. Needs more resolution below 7000, but quite immersive! Now add those alphas for seatiles and up it goes.
Main base still levelling issues, took a screen, but I assume that’s not new to you, also only took a short flight last night.:lol:Thank’s for taking it for a spin there Bugbutt,
Yeah,Ted and I are looking at the resolution and manipulating the Alpha’s ATM….we’ll “see” what come’s of it…LOL
AB leveling is known,they are just placeholder’s in A2 build.
Short flight’s is the Norm for this theater.If you fly more than 40 minute’s in any direction,then you fly right off the MAP!!!..LOL (maybe I can put in a “Return to Battle” message like in COD\MW or your K’dIA???)
You have about 10-15 minute’s Flight Time in Campain’ B4 you are either engaged or reach your target.Sometime’s less ala “SCRAMBLE,Enemy inbound’s”…hehehe
I think it will provide some intense action for the player,once I slap the “ScriptMonkeys” around a bit more…;)Dave